A Refugee's Mumbled Chant Poem by Felix Bongjoh

A Refugee's Mumbled Chant
(i)

Where do I
live? Here
in a countryless
country
storm-flung
to an island of me.

In a leaking boat.
In a sea of air.

Stroked with breezy
palms
and hugged

by the waves
of my breath
hurled off, rolling
to a shore

of me, the man
in a hat of tan dusk
brewing warm
goldenrod flowers,

as I sleep in a wide
drifting, sprawling bed,
a desert of me.

Weaving baskets
out of silicon fiber
to hold and seal
bouquets,

shredded petals
holding life's garlands,
as they spill off
in drips and splashes

through their weave
of creeping holes
in a spinning tide,

a world of umber
clouds pulling
sable and russet skies,
when night
lays out my only roof.

(ii)

I live drowned
in waves cutting through
gales from my eyes

clashing with squalls
from my ears
and a winged flying touch,

as a whirlwind
within me
lifts me to wrap me up

with blankets
of wool from onyx
and jade dark clouds

sinking me
in spirals
into an ink volcano on silt
at sea's deepest
bottom, my broken finger

the only quill to write
in squiggles a message
back home,

as I float back
in a wrecked ship,

its sails in embers
and ash powdering me
with a mask,

O deep-rooted scar
planted
with roots of a memory
igniting flames.

The fire smolders
through hills and valleys,
as I build

a rocky volcanic
mountain
out of my shredded breath,

the only bridge
to my life spitting out
slithering red rivers
drowning me.